This
toolkit accompanies the article “I Am Asian American,” and provides professional-development
resources to help teachers reflect on their own assumptions and knowledge gaps
about Asian Americans and to include a variety of Asian-American voices in
their curricula.

The umbrella term Asian-American often hides the great
diversity of historical contexts, cultures and current-day issues faced by
different peoples within its scope. Educators can help challenge the stereotype
that all Asian peoples have the same language, culture or history by reflecting
on their own assumptions and knowledge gaps and by including a variety of Asian-American
voices throughout their curricula.

Teacher
Reflection Questions

Do I have images, texts and/or lessons
that focus on the histories and current-day realities of Asian-American people?

Do my curriculum and materials portray
the diversity of experiences, cultures, languages and histories included under the
term Asian-American?

What do I know about the ethnic
background of my Asian-American students?

Do I have assumptions or stereotypes
about the ethnicity of my Asian-American students?

How might those assumptions show up in
the classroom?

Do I expect all the Asian-American
students in my class to be or act a certain way?

What are some steps I can take to learn
more about my Asian-American students’ backgrounds? What are some steps I can
take to challenge my assumptions about them?

Teaching
and Learning Resources

Smithsonian
Education: Asian Pacific American Heritage Teaching Resourcesincludes
links to a variety of curriculum guides, online resources and lesson plans to help
educators teach about the histories and cultures of Asian-American peoples. The
website includes interdisciplinary lesson plans on the history and experiences
of Korean Americans, Japanese Americans, Vietnamese Americans and other Asian
peoples. It also links to online exhibits on particular moments in Asian-American
history, such as the Japanese internment camps, Chinese immigration to
California and the creation of the state of Hawaii. Many of the lessons focus
on the experiences of young people and include primary sources written by young
people.

A Century of Challenge and Change: The
Filipino American Story is an interactive, multimedia
curriculum for students that follows the lives and experiences of Marissa and
Jordan, two young Filipino-Americans. Students travel with the two young
characters through Filipino history and culture; highlighted words are linked
to word definitions, photographs and more detailed information about names and
terms. The units also include a chance for students to “talk back to history”
and share what they learned with others.

Asian
Nation: Asian American History, Demographics, and Issuesis
curated by a Vietnamese-American professor of sociology at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst. The purpose of the site is to provide demographic and
historical information about Asian-American communities as well as articles and
blog posts about current issues that affect Asian-American communities, such as
the portrayal of Asian Americans in the media, international adoption,
assimilation and interracial dating. The site also links to primary sources.

As the site points out, two dominant stereotypes about Asian
Americans are that all Asian Americans are the same and that all Asian
Americans are foreigners. To challenge those stereotypes, ask students to
research immigration stories and timelines for various ethnic groups using the “Ethnic
Groups” link on the website. The page on the history of Chinese Americans
provides a useful counterpoint to the stereotype that all Asian Americans are
recent immigrants.

This subpage on socioeconomic statistics and demographics
could be used to start a research project in which students investigate the
differences among Asian-American ethnic groups today. You could ask students to
research the causes of differing levels of educational attainment or economic
conditions between different groups of Asian Americans.